Battle in Seattle

11/19/2022

**It has some points of merit, but lacks neutrality.** I was too young in 1999 to remember this World Trade Organization meeting. However, I am fully aware that this type of summit is usually a rallying point for demonstrators in favor of a thousand ideals: rebels without a cause, anarchists, socialists, communists, environmentalists, conspiracy theorists... I don't really know what happened, but there is no doubt that these protests were violent and, to a certain extent, they managed to achieve their objectives, severely disrupting the summit and the life of the city, and becoming a juicier and more relevant matter than the summit itself. In the following summits, there was more care. I could make a series of considerations around the real usefulness of the WTO, or even if there are

12/11/2025

**_Rebels needing a cause vs. SWAT police in Jet City_** I never knew there was a battle in Seattle and learned that the ‘battle’ refers to the protests that halted the 1999 World Trade Organization (WTO) summit in Seattle from Nov 30 to Dec 3. Not being a fan of the typical ‘protestor’ who annoyingly blocks traffic, I put off seeing this docudrama; the fact that it bombed at the box office didn’t help. However, it works by informing you of the WTO with further details at the climax concerning the near future, not to mention writer/director Stuart Townsend seamlessly interspliced footage from the actual event into the proceedings. The fictional dramas also surprisingly hook the viewer, shallow though they may be. Woody Harrelson heads the cast as a tough police officer with a shav